It’s All About Image

This week in the entertainment world in the UK there were two interesting stories. The first being that presenter of popular BBC 1 evening programme “The One Show” Adrian Chiles has been asked to shave off his beard by BBC executives. When Adrian started on the show he was clean-shaven but since the show’s return after its Christmas break he has been sporting a well-developed beard. Now this could just be one big publicity stunt for the show but if it isn’t it raise an interesting point.

As a nation or a culture do we need or expect our TV hosts to be clean-shaven? Is it right that people should be asked to remove their beards in order to present on a TV show? As a viewer do we react differently to people with beards or without beards? What this has underlined is how image conscious the media world is, that is just incase you weren’t already aware.

The second story was about Susan Boyle being snubbed by the Brit Awards when they announced the nominees for this years awards this week. In my opinion any awarding body has the right to put forward any nominee they like as at the end of the day the awards are their awards. There is all this news about Susan Boyle but there have been other big acts this year that have done well this year like Chipmunk, Kelly Clarkson, Cascada etc. and nobody is asking why didn’t they get nominated for awards? The press are putting the story out that it is because of her image that she hasn’t got nominated and she is getting the headlines but if it wasn’t Susan Boyle no other artist would get as much press attention for not being nominated.

Susan Boyle not getting nominated could totally be an image thing and the press may very well have hit the nail on the head but it could also be a case of the media just again using image as a news story as like I say before it is what the media world revolves around.

I think image will continue to play a part in media and entertainment for many years to come and although this is very hard to change I think it is important that it is documented as much as possible and discussed as it is the only way we will ever change the situation. If we can’t change it in the short term we need to make sure there is a constant high awareness of it.


Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"
”Shaking up the Youth of Today”

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com